Hey look, Iain M Banks agrees with me re: "literary" writers slumming for paychecks in SF. How these folks *do* love to be taken seriously....

Listening closely, we hear the opening strings of Summer here in the vast, gothic maze known to solicitors as Coventry Arms. Beefy Lou sits listless on his porch in his frayed 70's lawnchair, smoking marijuana / tobacco blended cigarettes (he calls it maribacco), sipping something green from a plastic Hamburgler cup, shouting out to every passer by, "Hey there's Osama Bin Laden! Let's shoot him in the face!", and playing the porn star game with his friend Normal Ralph (they take turns naming porn stars until one of them can't think of another, and spend most of the time arguing over the definition of "star" in the term "porn star"). Once in a while Murderous Tom stops by to cast depraved threats across the churned mulch channel that divides Beefy Lou's porch from the Coventry sidewalk, a chaotic ruin of stunted shrubbery, brown loogies, and submerged maribacco butts. It's something like the English channel, and Murderous Tom something like France. Sometimes the day darkens and the stars come out, forcing Beefy Lou to light his giant candle (this thing is like two feet in diameter with a wick wide as my thumb), torching the porch, the mulch channel, and the nearby environs with candle-light. This attracts all sorts of strange wanderers to the porch: vagabond mystics, fallen priests, starry-eyed pandas, etc. They sit within the flickering candle glare until driven off by Murderous Tom, filled with rage. Meanshile... TO BE CONT.